Build Trust on Black Friday: Translate your online store (2021 edit).

The small print needs translating too

Some years ago, Black Friday stopped being a date on every American calendar and became a global phenomenon.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. It doesn’t even matter if you don’t celebrate Christmas, on Black Friday, thousands of consumers across the world will be on the hunt for the best bargains.

If you own an online store, this is a great opportunity to increase your turnover.

Official EU stats from June 2021 concluded that 73% of internet users in the EU shopped online in 2020.

What’s more, if you have customers from different countries, your online store really should be localized in the languages that your consumers speak.

Interesting CSA research (CSA Research – Can’t Read, Won’t Buy – B2C) from thousands of consumers in 29 countries showed that:

• 65% prefer content in their own language.
• 73% want product reviews in their own language.
• 40% would not buy in other languages.

Even though we live in a globalised world, we feel more comfortable and safer using our own language.

And having a multi-lingual online store is important for several reasons:

• It gives you a competitive advantage.
• With good local SEO marketing, it improves your search engine positioning as consumers usually search in their own language.
• It shows that you respect your customers and their language and culture, which is positive for your brand reputation.

When we talk about online store localization, we often focus on product descriptions and important factors about our SEO and SEM campaigns (key words, alternative text, meta tags, etc.). However, other sections are just as important and can make the consumer opting for your shop.

Translation builds trust

E-commerce has always had an important obstacle: consumer trust.

Fortunately, thanks to technology and national and international laws that regulate e-commerce, consumers feel now much safer shopping online.

If we want to make sure that customers from other countries buy from our store, we need to maintain the same level of trust in our localized versions. That’s why, as part of the shopping experience, it is vitally important that your customers can easily find all information related to payment methods, refunds and returns, delivery methods and costs or specific conditions for special offers in their own language.

Amazon, the e-commerce leader, takes this very seriously, as you can see on their Spanish website:

Amazon localizes any information that might be important for the user during the shopping process.

All this information is part of your customer service; providing it in your customers’ language could have more of an impact on their buying decision than the product price.

See you for the next post!